School Start Time Panel Reviews

Research On Teen Sleep Patterns

By Larissa Lytwyn

The School Start Time Committee, composed of 15 parents, school faculty, medical experts, a student, and representatives from the school board and Legislative Council, met for the first time October 13 to analyze the issue of adolescent sleep research and its relation to school start times.

Superintendent of Schools Evan Pitkoff, an ex-officio member of the panel, accentuated the committee’s role to “collect and provide data to determine the pros and cons of the existing [school] schedule,” according to its official charge. The committee was encouraged to “invite medical professionals to provide relevant information regarding sleep cycles and learning patterns of children/adolescents” and document the findings.

Dr Edward O’Malley, medical director of Norwalk Hospital’s Sleep Disorders Center, Dr David Oelberg, director of Danbury Hospital’s Sleep Disorders Center, and Dr Douglas Kahn conducted a PowerPoint presentation on circadian rhythms from prepubescence to early adulthood.

Dr Oelberg explained that the deepest state of sleep, occurring at the beginning of the sleep cycle, releases growth hormones essential to pubescent development while dream-filled REM sleep aids in memory retention. A substantive duration of each component is crucial to a healthy sleep pattern.

Melatonin, a hormone released in the pineal gland that signals sleep time, is released increasingly later in individuals’ aged 10 through 17. This explains, biologically, why teens tend to go to bed later and sleep later. A longitudinal study conducted in the late 90s by leading sleep specialist Dr Mary Carskadon concluded that persons age 13 through 23 need about 9.25 hours of sleep nightly; most get about 7.25. The study, Dr Oelberg noted, emphasized physical pubescent development over age. Therefore, a developed 13-year-old could need more sleep than a late-blooming 15-year-old.

Dr Oelberg cited a 2000 study conducted by the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory in Groton. Recruits, generally ages 17 through 19, originally had lights-out at 10 pm and rose at 4 am the next morning. In response to fatigued trainees’ decreased morale and productivity, the Navy moved lights-out an hour earlier, to 9 pm.

Fatigue levels, however, did not change.

“Researches coming into the barracks at 9:30 pm found that the trainees were still wide-awake,” noted Dr Oelberg. “So to say that teens should ‘just go to bed earlier’ isn’t always physiologically possible.”

Today, Groton trainees once again have 10 pm lights-out, but now rise at 6 am.

All three doctors recommended a later start time for adolescents while maintaining an earlier start time for naturally earlier-rising elementary-aged students.

Districts, such as those in Minnesota, that have already implemented a later start time for older students, sometimes by as little as an hour, have reported fewer car accidents and that students “were awake during first period,” said Dr Oelberg.

The most accidents and injuries in car accidents occur in people aged 16 to 25, said Dr Oelberg. “These accidents occur around 8 am,” he said. “When students are driving to school.”

The National Sleep Foundation, Dr Oelberg said, recommends that all schools start no earlier than 9 am. He noted this was a radical proposition in the face of a national trend to begin school earlier. These earlier start times, he continued, could be credited to factors including federal recommendations to implement more schooling hours, as well as sports schedules and extracurricular activities.

Several questions ensued the doctors’ presentation. Barbara Bloom, a parent, mentioned how her younger-aged student still liked to sleep late. Dr O’Malley emphasized how the studies conducted centered on physiological development over age, perhaps because of this very tendency. Other committee members recalled rising early themselves as high school students 20 years ago. “This may have been true in this region,” said Dr O’Malley. “But we are talking in terms of national averages. On average, school times have gotten progressively earlier over the last ten to 20 years.”

Dr Pitkoff distributed copies of a Columbia University report, The Effects of School Starting Times on Educational Outcomes; a piece by Kyla L. Wahlstrom, associate director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota, called The Prickly Politics Of School Start Times; and a guide, Adolescent Sleep Needs and Patterns, available online at the National Sleep Foundation, www.sleepfoundation.org.

During the next meeting, October 29, at 7 pm, Dr Pitkoff said that the committee would discuss the articles and hear more information from medical professionals on sleep pattern research. The meeting will take place in Canaan House, 4 Fairfield Circle South. The public is welcome to attend.